My BF said something like that this morning, and I just replied "I feel sad." which is a trick I learned from a 1950s book on how to be a good wife. Almost always works. The alternative often successful method is to hold up fun-house mirror by saying something like "Oooh, you are such a monster!" Basic winning formula is to exhibit any behavior that reinforces rather than undercuts dominance while emphasizing that he is displaying arrogance or disregard for your feelings or preferences. Then I calculated (again) how much money I am saving by letting him pay all the bills

Clarice seems like a really nice woman and reading between the lines of both title thread and subsequent content, I'm thinking her DW is a Grade A knuckle dragger. Now, I can't even count how many times I've been threatened with violence over the internet by irate husbands. One offered to buy me a round trip ticket to Oslo in order to kick my ass behind the local Burger King. My response was "There is a Burger Kings in Oslo?" which kind of deflated the tension as we segued into a comparative review of menus and the impact of local cuisine on fast food offerings ala the opening of Pulp Fiction. I'm not saying that this is a Thelma & Clarice situation here, but I'm not sure its just "Get me my TV dinner so I can eat with one hand down my pants while I watch Baywatch" either.

...reading the book Economics: Private and Public Choice from Jacob's investing curriculum. I count reading comprehension in my asset column, but still... it's a boring book. I am convinced that if clinical trials were conducted this book would outperform Ambien by a large margin in the effectiveness of inducing sleep...yet I persist.

I actually found that the more readable of the books on that list. It helps a little to read the chapter summaries before the chapters.

She said her husband was an engineer. That's just how engineers think and talk. I didn't get it until I read a book about males that explained why they sometimes get angry with their tools. Inefficiency seems like direct inhibition on their freedom. Like the chaos of the world is a swamp causing them to wade rather than run freely. But, if you allow them to carry on in this manner, they will find themselves lonely old men playing with the timing mechanisms on hobby train sets and intermittently swearing at any dog who dares to piss on their lawn.

I understand. My father, R.I.P., was an engineer and he could be a douchbag in that regard. My mother would just euphemistically cover it up by saying “he’s a perfectionist” when I would be crying after he called me uncoordinated or some type of other douchebag shit.

That being said, an engineering degree is not a license to be an insensitive prick nor does it provide life long counter wiping amnesty.

I don't disagree, but I recently was engaged in teaching a couple little girls with Asperger's Syndrome. It put a whole new spin on this temperament/behavior-tendency-set to witness it being exhibited by a cute 7 year old female with big blue eyes. On one occasion she typed an e-mail to her teacher, asking her to print up some of her artwork ASAP! She turned to me and proudly said "That means 'as soon as possible', not IMMEDIATELY!" I was chuckling pretty hard as I lightly suggested "At your convenience" or "When you have a chance" as other possible options. OTOH, I had very little patience with the 9 year old boy in the same group who was so hyper-sensitive he would burst into tears and tantrums at the slightest provocation.

It's not always a straight-forward matter of an individual having the license to behave in some manner or another, but rather a matter of gaining self-awareness in alignment with self-interest. Everybody has the right to play to a completely empty auditorium.

My morning commute once involved a man with a severe stutter and by severe I mean not able to get one fuckin word out that didn't sound like a hooked on phonics tape caught in an infinite loop. And probably because his mother or his speech therapist or his psychologist told him he had the right to speak like everyone else he had no compunction torturing a bus load of innocent, drowsy, commuters. I swear this one stuttering prick sounded like a herd of free-basing sheep engaging in a multi-acre pastoral orgy. Did he have the right to play to a completely empty auditorium? I guess. But in retrospect, if I had taken his stuttering card and shoved it down his wouldn't shut the fuck up mouth I am convinced I would have never had to stand on that bus again.

And don't take this the wrong way, but your husband sounds like a douche.

@Jason:

You know, English is my third language, so I've double-checked with Urban Dictionary: "A douche is an individual who has shown himself to be very brainless in one way or another". So true... Emotional Intelligence is "one way" in which DH is not intelligent at all... but "another" way is a different story. We also have our history...
I met him for the first time when I was 18 and he - 19. We were just friends who drifted apart over the years. I met him for the second time 10 years later when I was visiting our mutual friends in Germany. He was there as well. We clicked. We visited each other in various countries a few times. And then, there was this in-or-out moment - an international love affair could go on only for so long. At that time I was a single mother living in Israel. The street where I lived was the very last street of Jerusalem. From my bedroom window I saw Judaean Mountains, a town of Bethlehem, a silhouette of the Church of the Nativity, and a fence dividing Israel from the West Bank. Every morning I saw Palestinians crossing the border through the holes they dug under the fence to get to work in Israel. A couple of years later the guys for whom crawling under the barbed wire was just a morning commute started another wave of Intifada. My apartment building was sprayed with bullets on multiple occasions. I learned about it from my friends and the internet. Did MY bedroom window get sprayed? I am thanking my lucky stars for not knowing the answer. When it happened I already left. I was getting my Master's Degree in Speech Pathology and living in Sunnyvale, CA; risking a douche shower, not a bullet shower.
Our official marriage was fraught with problems and by itself was a testament to DH's logistical brilliance. The fact that anybody with a heartbeat could drive to Las Vegas and get married was not a part of our information field. In our heads it was something firmly connected to the citizenship. Getting married in Israel was out of the question as it had only a religious marriage. Our only remaining option was the Russian authorities. DH inquired within the Russian consulate in San Francisco. Yes, they did have that authority. No, they had never done it before. In the mid-90s, a post doc was a one-way ticket from ravaged Russia. DH could stay in the US if he wanted to. The bureaucrats in the consulate thought him to be an unpatriotic run-away. Then, there was a bride issue. Leaving Russia for Israel was considered a treason at the time. I was stripped of my citizenship at the exit point. The guys in the consulate were in no mood to help us. Yet DH convinced them, collected a mind-boggling number of required papers and made an appointment. I flew in from Israel. Here we were, a run-away and a Jewish traitor of Russian motherland, the first couple ever to be married by the Russian Consulate in San Francisco. We have a marriage license #1 to show for it...
That's my story... and for now I am sticking to it.

Last edited by Clarice on Sat Mar 03, 2018 7:30 pm, edited 3 times in total.

My BF said something like that this morning, and I just replied "I feel sad." which is a trick I learned from a 1950s book on how to be a good wife. Almost always works. The alternative often successful method is to hold up fun-house mirror by saying something like "Oooh, you are such a monster!" Basic winning formula is to exhibit any behavior that reinforces rather than undercuts dominance while emphasizing that he is displaying arrogance or disregard for your feelings or preferences. Then I calculated (again) how much money I am saving by letting him pay all the bills

@7WB5:

That's an interesting idea - I will try it. My natural instinct is kind of the opposite - let the bastard have it. In the particular instance that I described DH was wiping the water with a stern look on his face, treating the situation like it was a radioactive spill, and asking repeatedly, "Why didn't you wipe that water?" (because I had no clue it was there). On the second or third time, I finally said in a slow kind voice, one would reserve for his second cousin with Down Syndrome, "Why would I? I have you for that." He said, "Ha-ha" and the situation somewhat dissipated.

I actually found that the more readable of the books on that list. It helps a little to read the chapter summaries before the chapters.

That's the thing - it's very readable, common-sense type of text, nothing particularly revealing. That's why I find it so boring. I am sticking to it because trusting Jacob's judgement is my best option for now. I am waiting for books on financial analysis to feel, "OMG, who knew? Not me."

I flew in from Israel. Here we were, a run-away and a Jewish traitor of Russian motherland, the first couple ever to be married by the Russian Consulate in San Francisco. We have a marriage license #1 to show for it...
That's my story... and for now I am sticking to it.

I loved the idea; DH - not so much. As I was experimenting with DIY laundry detergents and making my own cheese DH developed a penchant for Gruyere and became pretty good at downhill skiing. He also embarked on the pursuit of perfect - a perfect garage door instead of a perfectly functional one, a perfect dining set instead of a perfectly functional one, a perfect couch instead of a functional one.

Personally, I think reducing the garage door opener theme down to a Wheaton level thing may be factually accurate but practically harmful if you're using different scales. You may see yourself as being higher on the ERE scale, and from his perspective he might be a few Wheaton levels up from you on judging value. Looking down at your partner from any perspective is how resentment gets started.

To help bridge the gap, think of cheese and garage door openers as falling on a product S-curve where cost is the horizontal axis and quality is the vertical axis.

It sounds like maybe your DH thinks above that inflection point while you prefer to live well below it. Guess what -- I think you're both wrong.

Rather than forcing your DH to play with you on the low end of the curve you might try meeting him in the middle and looking for that good-deal inflection point as a team. Maybe homemade cheese isn't his thing, but finding his favorite inexpensive Gruyere would be considered a fun challenge for an optimization-minded person. Also, speaking from personal experience, if you were to actively participate in the process rather than criticize his choices from a distance or detach yourself entirely from his way of thinking I suspect he'll be a lot more receptive to your input. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he eventually recognizes that good faith and offers to help you with your laundry detergent recipe. I guess that's a long way of saying that your fascination with ERE doesn't have to negatively affect your marriage as long as you don't allow your ideas to become a wedge in your relationship.

BTW, reading about you and your DH sounds a lot like my DW and I when she first got into ERE before I did. Rarely are two people perfectly aligned on the ERE Wheaton scale when they get started, but the good news is that you can absolutely win him over. Don't give up!

Also, speaking from personal experience, if you were to actively participate in the process rather than criticize his choices from a distance or detach yourself entirely from his way of thinking I suspect he'll be a lot more receptive to your input.

@Tyler9000:

I REALLY appreciate your perspective. Please continue. I've looked through your posts and it seems that you are from a very similar background as DH (Silicon Valley, high tech). You are the man I've been looking for! Please tell me what has worked for you and your wife. How did it feel for you in the very beginning? How long did it take you to come to the other side? Your words,"if you were to actively participate in the process" sound hollow to me. I don't know what you mean. Could you please be more specific?

When DW first started getting into early retirement we were both working in Silicon Valley. She was pretty unhappy while I was focused on shooting up the career arc. I knew that FI was rationally a reasonable option, but I think I was so tied up in my own thing that I dismissed it as her being stressed at work and thought it would eventually work itself out. It wasn't until I was canned from my dream job -- dejected, broken, and burned out -- and finally came to terms with the idea that careerism was fundamentally unhealthy (not just for her, but for us both) that I think I really understood. But even then, we used to joke that I was always a few weeks or months behind her.

She started by trying to have me read a bunch of books. I scanned a few, and most didn't click. The first that really resonated was "Work Less Live More" by Bob Clyatt. Maybe it was his focus on semi-retirement that was an easier initial pill to swallow, but that lit the spark that grew from there. When the idea really took off was when the concept of perpetually living off of your investments captured my imagination. It turns out I like spreadsheets -- go figure. Once the goal was aligned with my innate interests, I couldn't stop thinking about it and it quickly grew from there. Within about two years we left California to accelerate our final approach to FI.

When I talk about "actively participating in the process" I mean that rather than picking on a behavior you don't like, try engaging with DH instead. For example, the next time he's shopping for a garage door opener ask him to explain the various options and offer your favorites. Maybe you don't think you need one at all, but by offering your help you can at least steer the final decision a little and also influence how he thinks about the problem. In the process, you'll also grow to appreciate why it means so much to him. Whether he consciously understands it or not, it will also very likely make him more open to reciprocal behavior of asking to help you with something you're interested in. I can't claim that I invented the idea, as I believe it's a classic couples counseling thing. Basically, take the first step and it helps break the ice and soften hardened hearts.

Another tip I have is one I learned in consulting. Know your audience, reframe challenges into a vision they are passionate about, and make them feel empowered to do something about it by playing to their strengths. One good example is my spreadsheet obsession mentioned earlier and how it opened my eyes to new possibilities. For another, here's how I might respond to Jason's quip if your DH actually said this:

"Thanks for the showing me this honey, I would love to ski down that!!!"

Clarice's Husband

"I know, right? Hey -- have you ever thought about how nice it would be to ski every day? I wonder what it would take for us to inexpensively live in the mountains with a great life like that. It sounds like a challenging but solvable problem. Got any ideas?"

"Thanks for the showing me this honey, I would love to ski down that!!!"

Clarice's Husband

"I know, right? Hey -- have you ever thought about how nice it would be to ski every day? I wonder what it would take for us to inexpensively live in the mountains with a great life like that. It sounds like a challenging but solvable problem. Got any ideas?"

In March my income dipped, kind of by a lot. One of the rehabilitation centers where I work was quarantined because of the flu and closed for new admissions. My second place needed me only occasionally, really occasionally. Thus, I am in the process of getting a third place to work. Polyamory, here I come!
On the positive note, things kind of have quieted at home with DH. It looks like I've survived the blowback from shaking things up - getting back to work, getting a separate bank account and a separate credit card. That's a good thing about sensory people: if you persist they accept the situation as a new normal. They live in a concrete world of "what is" and don't get bothered with "what ifs". The hard thing for us is to survive the change as we both tend to approach the emotionally charged situations with an introverted feeling of a 10-year-old. Thinking about all that, getting deep into the car model, and listening to Personality Hacker podcast kept me destructed from Economics: Private and Public Choice. I am ashamed to admit - I haven't finished it yet.
Another good thing was that I incurred no unexpected expenses of significance during March - nothing broke. Here are my numbers:

About that step ladder... I had a patient who was putting away her Christmas decorations, fell of the chair and hit her head. I saw her to document the absence of the swallowing reflex and no potential for feeding, except through a tube. After doing that evaluation, I ran to OSH and bought a perfect step ladder. I checked CL - there was no "perfect" there. Anyway, that's my March.

The step ladder thing is evading me from many angles. Was this a person already being fed from a tube or is that a result of them falling down? And could you be liable since you bought the step-ladder if they fell from that as it appears to be not that of an unlikely scenario? And I’m not even getting into the whole Christmas being three months ago issue.